Ideation: a structured approach

From profiling to ideation in a 2x2 matrix

All the innovation hype has increased the frequency of ideation or brainstorming sessions within organizations to design new products. At Uncommon we’ve learned that some sessions may be meaningless or even a waste of time when they have no process, specific outcome or purpose. Usually, in these kind of informal creative sessions, the facilitator briefly communicates to the team some hypothesis or findings he has about the problem, and asks them as if it was mechanical: “I need some ideas for this project”.

Even with very experimented teams, we think this approach can be somehow limited. Therefore, we’ve been working on some tools and processes to facilitate different types of ideation sessions. The following is one of these tools.

The tool

Our team is testing a quick ideation process based on a simple 2x2 matrix that helps us ensure that the solutions we develop respond to real needs and persona profiles. The process is divided in four stages, and it covers, in a slightly different perspective, the classic design process.

Identify the attributes

Imagine you’re working with a fitness center and your challenge is to generate new ideas for people to include exercise into their daily routine. After doing primary research, you find out there are two factors that define how people relate to exercise. Those attributes are:

-Time to exercise: how much time do people have during the day for this purpose.

-Desire for exercise: do they really want to exercise?

The attributes can be people’s abilities, beliefs, barriers, values or capabilities related to your challenge. It’s very important to say that there are no correct or incorrect attributes, it depends on what you think is more relevant for your project; after working with two or three diagrams you will know which one best fits your purpose.

Create persona profiles

Persona profiles help us clarify who are we designing for. For this process you’ll have to define one profile per quadrant.

-Try to use creative names: it will help you remember the profile easily and it will foster conversation around it.

-Describe their behavior and attitudes: you need to describe not only psychographic characteristics, but the main attitudes and values that make them different from others.

Define the principles

Design principles are guidelines that keep us focused during the ideation process. They come from the research, and they are an explicit statement of what we are trying to accomplish.

Define one principle per profile and phrase it like a requirement; use the sentence: ideas must be_________ (insert the adjective that better describes it).

Ideate

You’ve gone through a process of understanding and articulating what is important for your customers, all the discussion that you’ve had with your team was the warm up for this point. Ideation should be conduced in two different ways:

-Individual: for 5 minutes, in silence, each participant works with the first quadrant and brainstorms solutions that respond to the design principle.

-Collective: in pairs, share your ideas and generate new solutions upon them.

Once you’re done with each quadrant, prioritize the best ideas with your team and refine them.

You can download a high-resolution copy here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxB4EmVH1HgUYTVhNHNjVXFBTVU

If you found the tool helpful or have additional ideas, we’d love to hear from you. My email is alberto@noescomun.com